Review: Oscar Peterson festival brings true jazz to Ontario

Share

We've come to expect little from jazz.

Mostly the soundtrack for septuagenarian nostalgia these days, jazz makes only occasional appearances in ads for luxury products, none affordable to its performers then or now. And then there's George Clooney still thinking he's Frank Sinatra.

So who can be prepared when the real deal comes along in all its sweet and sad glory, as it did last weekend at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., for the debut of the Oscar Peterson International Jazz Festival?

Who ever expected to hear live The Peacocks (A Timeless Place), a rare and mysterious ballad from self-effacing accompanist Jimmy Rowles? Who could have imagined it so effortlessly, breathlessly performed at the opening Friday concert by Cécile McLorin Salvant? Only 28, she's already Ella Fitzgerald's heiress apparent.

"We wanted something different," says Kelly Peterson, the late pianist's widow and festival producer. "The summer has so many festivals, so we wanted one in winter. And remember, this is Black History Month. But the idea was to do more, not to have every concert as a tribute to Oscar. It's our intent to present true, swinging jazz. This is a jazz festival."

The festival has its beginnings in a series of 2015 recordings sessions she organized. An A-list of jazz pianists were invited to play on Peterson's Bosendorfer grand piano in the Peterson home for the three-CD set, Oscar, With Love. After Regina-born pianist/arranger Renee Rosnes arrived for her turn, the talk between the two women turned to festivals, particularly those based around a single musician, like the James Moody Jazz Festival in Newark, N.J., where Rosnes now lives. The pianist was soon appointed the Peterson Festival's artistic director.

"At first, we didn't know where it was going to be held," Rosnes says. "But when Niagara-on-the-Lake came up, it seemed to be the right place.

Boosting off-season wine-country tourism helped local business get on board. "A lot of people think wineries close up in winter when, in fact, it's a wonderful time for visitors to get a deeper, more thorough perspective," says Suzanne Janke, estate director for Stratus Vineyards, host site for a pair of concerts.

So, yes, this was that kind of jazz festival – the Bordeaux-sipping, dreamy ballads kind, something of lovely social fantasy not far in spirit from that evoked by the "dear gentle folk of Newport," as sung in That's Jazz by Bing Crosby in the 1956 film High Society. In broader terms, here was a reminder of jazz's golden afterglow in the 1960s and early '70s, when the music still made money, when compact festivals from Newport, R.I., to Juan-les-Pins on the French Riviera, were well-curated at the start. Support from Playboy Magazine, Hollywood and designers such as Yves Saint Laurent brought an autumnal richness to jazz's surface.

At Niagara-on-the-Lake, one saw what might be called the Ontario jazz society – white folks for the most part, well turned out and hitting their stride. The look and feel of success glided effortless from day to day, hour to hour, from the trays of buttery Oysters Rockefeller passed around at a Saturday evening reception at the Stratus's glass-clad winery – it could stand in for a space station in a movie – to late-afternoon Sunday, when Ed Bickert, the wry Toronto guitarist, accepted the inaugural Canadian Jazz Masters Award.

The festival's musical model is the Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) concerts organized by American impresario Norman Granz from 1944 to 1983, with Oscar Peterson being a rising star from 1949 on. (Granz died in 2001 at the age of 83.) These were the original supergroups, the model for the all-star unit Rosnes organized for the all-American Friday kick-off concert at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in St. Catharines, and the Canadian all-star wrap-up Sunday afternoon at Stratus.

St. Catharines heard a band – Christian McBride, bass, drummer Kenny Washington, to give an idea only of the rhythm section – unlikely to ever be together again, its recording of the night destined only for the vaults of the festival's own archives. Yet this group might well be mentioned in the same sentence with the now legendary 1953 Jazz at Massey Hall concert and one or two Boss Brass blowouts over the years, led by Rob McConnell. (The late Toronto trombonist McConnell received a Jazz Master award, as did Oscar Peterson himself.)

Indeed, the lineage of Rosnes's "International All-Star 'Jazz at the Philharmonic'" led directly back to that legendary Massey Hall Quintet. Trumpeter Jon Faddis hit some screaming high notes that only Dizzy Gillespie, his mentor in the Quintet, might have comprehended. All-Star pianist Benny Green, a musical cubist, channelled the hard-bop at the Quintet's core. Green also the set the high bar for piano playing that was leaped over with ease with the Saturday afternoon two-piano pairing of Rosnes and her husband, Bill Charlap. One-upmanship, a great jazz staple, was certainly in the festival air. Rosnes's contemporary Canadian JATP edition, led by saxophonist Mike Murley, although out-famed by the American, proved to be down and dirtier.

Examples of the JATP film legacy were screened Saturday, at St. Mark's Anglican Church, as smoky jam sessions shown on grainy film contrasted with vibrant colour shards of the sun piercing the stained glass of the 1792 church. Film host and long-time Granz confidant Jacques Muyal felt the Peterson fest "had soul" but warned that when a jazz festival "goes far from jazz, it creates confusion in the music."

One might assume that the racism and violence Granz famously fought with the JATP, insisting on non-segregated concerts, was in jazz's past. Saxophonist Jimmy Greene's very presence on stage Friday sadly refuted that, coming only two days after the tragic school shooting in Parkland, Fla. Greene's own daughter, Ana Grace Mârquez-Greene, was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. She was only six years old.

"Everyone understood," Rosnes explained. "I don't think it changed the dynamic. It's good to be an artist. Jazz is the art of improvisations. It's living in the moment."